...for January 2002

January 29, 2002 -

• William is shunning wild weekends at university to protect his privacy. William, 19, spent only two out of 13 weekends in St Andrews last term. Instead, he takes a small and select group of trusted pals to a cottage given to him by the Queen Mother on her Birkhall estate on Royal Deeside. One fellow student said: "William is concerned that he is too visible out and about in St Andrews. "It is a very small place and he finds it difficult to relax here. He feels particularly hounded by tourists and visitors." William, 19, who is in his first year of a four-year history of art degree, splits his weekends between Birkhall, his father's Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire, and London. But he has mainly remained in Scotland. Last weekend, he stayed at Birkhall and had lunch with Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles at Balmoral. Although William has been persuaded by his university pals to go out on the town in St Andrews or Edinburgh, these occasions have been few and far between. Instead, he prefers to spend his evenings studying or playing chess. He developed a passion for the game during his gap year in Patagonia and he is a member of St Andrews University chess club. The fellow student said: "William is quite a private lad and keeps himself to himself. "I think he also misses his friends down south a bit. "He really has spent very little spare time here. All he seems to do is study. "It is a pity really, because he is not enjoying a typical university life at St Andrews like the other students."
  
  
• Their close friendship with William and Harry has made the van Cutsem boys the talk of the town — and, for once, it’s not because they’re a bad influence on the young princes, says Sue Reid As the spotlight glares unbecomingly on Prince Harry’s partying lifestyle, there is one upper-crust family that remains untarnished by shenanigans at the Rattlebone Inn and the young royal’s drinking den, Club H. Flick through the pages of any society mag and they’re there: a van Cutsem strutting his stuff with Prince William at a Smith’s Lawn polo match; a van Cutsem jigging at Tatler’s Little Black Book party; a van Cutsem on the catwalk at a glittering Mayfair charity bash. “The van Cutsem boys seem to be everywhere,” says one society-watcher. “They are just of the age to be out on the town and catching the paparazzi’s eye. Two have pads in the same smart SW1 street. And there are an awful lot of them.” But how has the Roman Catholic van Cutsem family, headed by the 60-year-old Norfolk landowner and bloodstock breeder Hugh, cantered up the social rankings to become one of the best connected in Britain? It’s a question that has become the subject of intensely serious, and somewhat jealous, debate among upmarket movers and shakers. The Tatler set is awash with rumours about whether the VCs were guests at Sandringham for the Prince of Wales’s Christmas shoot (yes) and whether they received a personal yuletide card from the Highgrove royals (yes). For their part, the van Cutsems — Hugh, his Dutch-born wife, Emilie, and their four handsome sons, 28-year-old Edward (Prince Charles’s godson and a childhood chum of the royal princes), Hugh junior, 27, Nicholas, 24, and William, 22 — remain tight-lipped about their enduring camaraderie with the royals. The younger van Cutsems recently turned down — “politely but firmly” — the offer of a family photoshoot with Tatler. “They are fearfully shy of getting their names in the papers,” explains one van Cutsem-watcher. “They don’t want to be seen as publicity tarts. They are absolutely not of the same ilk as some who hang around Prince Charles’s sons and hope the world gets to know of it. They are gregarious, confident, polite guys who happen to be close friends with the future king of England. One or other of the van Cutsem boys is often seen discreetly out with Prince William when he’s in London — Foxtrot Oscar is a favourite eatery of theirs — and they shoot together in the country at weekends.” Perhaps, speculate some, it is because the van Cutsem boys have to work for their living that they are viewed as suitable pals for the young Princes — particularly following the recent revelations about Harry’s wild lifestyle. Edward is a financial broker in the City; Hugh is a fund manager for Cazenove; Nicholas is in the Household Cavalry; and William, said to be the wild card of the family, spent part of his recent university holidays as an intern at St James’s Palace, courtesy of Prince Charles. The only blot on the boys’ escutcheon seems to be their friendship with Izzy Winkler, the 24-year-old society girl who was said to have snorted cocaine at a party two years ago after being introduced into Prince William’s circle by Edward van Cutsem. “They’re not complete angels,” admits a friend, who studied alongside the van Cutsems at Ampleforth College, the Roman Catholic public school. “They like beer and fun.” There has been some cooling of the friendship between the Prince of Wales and the van Cutsem parents. “Hugh made his name as Charles’s best friend when his marriage to Princess Diana was disintegrating, but those days are over,” says one insider. “He and Emilie provided a bolt hole for Charles to escape to, either at a private house on their estate in Norfolk or a shooting lodge they have in the north. But the Prince of Wales’s life has changed. He doesn’t need a bolt hole. He requires different things from his circle of friends, which today includes the Palmer-Tomkinsons and the Duke of Westminster.” The sons, however, remain close. Take Edward van Cutsem, who was a page at the Prince of Wales’s wedding, and featured, with his brothers, tumbling in the snow with the royal princes in Jonathan Dimbleby’s controversial documentary about Prince Charles’s life. Described by gossip columnists as a “babe magnet”, and the former beau of the wealthy debutante-turned-model Camilla Astor, Edward was touted as a potential chaperone for Prince William on his gap-year travels to South America. In the event, it never happened. “It’s just impossible for me to take so much time off work so early in my career. It would also not make sense commercially,” opined the eldest van Cutsem boy in a rare brush with the press. “However, it would have been a very great honour.” Unlike the royal family, the van Cutsems, it seems, can be trusted to keep their feet on the ground, and not in their mouths.

January 12, 2002 -

• The youngest son of Prince Charles and the late Diana, Princess of Wales, has attended a drugs rehabilitation clinic. Prince Harry went to the facility in London after he admitted to smoking cannabis and drinking alcohol, it has emerged. Newspaper reports in London say his father sent the 17-year-old to visit Featherstone Lodge Rehabilitation Centre, in south London. A spokesman for St James's Palace, Prince Charles's official residence, told CNN: "This is a serious matter which was resolved within the family, and is now in the past and is now closed." The spokesman added that Prince Harry had smoked only cannabis "in the past" and that the matter had been dealt with. The center is run by the Phoenix House UK project, of which Prince Charles is a patron. He attended the opening of the refurbished Featherstone Lodge in 1998. The palace issued a statement in response to a press report in a British Sunday newspaper that Prince Harry had been treated at the clinic and that his father had sent him there for a day as a short, sharp shock. Prince Harry's mother died in a car crash in Paris in August 1997. According to a report in the News of the World newspaper, Prince Charles told aides: "There is no point in hiding the truth. These are the facts -- let people make their own judgment." Bill Pudiscombe, chief executive of the Phoenix House U.K., told CNN that Prince Harry had visited Featherstone Lodge. "He was friendly and relaxed, and the residents received him warmly," Pudiscombe said. He would not comment on the News of the World report. "The way we interpreted it was it was a piece of good, responsible parenting by Prince Charles," Pudiscombe said. "When I spoke to His Royal Highness, I told him that Harry had enjoyed his visit." Featherstone Lodge houses about 31 full-time residents who undergo intensive therapy for drug and alcohol addiction.
  
  
• Prince William has been accused of abusing a photographer and forcing him into a ditch while out hunting, it has been reported. While out with the Beaufort Hunt along with his father and brother, Princes Charles and Prince Harry, William spotted Clive Postlethwaite, a freelance photographer, and is said to have exploded, shouting 'F**king piss off, Postlethwaite!' before forcing him out of his way with his horse. 'He screamed at me and his horse was so close that I had little choice but to drop my camera equipment and to jump backwards into the hedge and ditch. I was standing waiting on a corner of the farm where he was returning. Prince Charles went past first and then William saw me and went mad. He could see me from a long way off and I did nothing to startle him,' claims the photographer. A St James Palace spokesman said she knew nothing of the incident.
  
  
• FOR those who don't subscribe to the New Statesman magazine, here's a taste of what we can expect during the Queen's jubilee year. In the latest issue, the rag unveils "startling evidence" that reveals Prince William as "a royal refusenik at the heart of her [the Queen's] family". "William should have become His Royal Highness Prince William of Wales on his 18th birthday," we are told confidently. "In a move that was little noticed at the time, he refused point-blank to accept the title." A palace spokesman dismisses the NS's "startling evidence" thus: "Prince William does have that title and any suggestion to the contrary is wrong. He doesn't use it for everyday purposes, but that was also true of his father, who only started using it when he reached the age of 21."
  
  
• Harry has passed his driving test at the first attempt. He got through on New Year's Eve, fifteen weeks after his 17th birthday. Harry took the test in secret on roads close to his father's Highgrove home in Gloucestershire. His detective was also in the car as the examiner passed him. Harry then proudly announced his triumph to dad Charles, brother Wills and party guests at Highgrove. But he wasn't quite as quick as Wills to earn his licence. The elder prince passed five weeks after turning seventeen. Harry had already passed his theory exam when he took his test on Monday. He had prepared with about twenty lessons but had long been practising his driving skills on private roads. Former royal nanny Tiggy Legge Bourke once caused public outrage by allowing him to take the wheel of a Land Rover when he was 12. The young prince could barely see over the dashboard as he drove at up to 20mph at Balmoral. Tiggy was smoking in the back seat at the time. Wills and Harry were taken on go-karting trips by mum Diana when they were young. And Harry has been spotted driving across private land in Gloucs. He celebrated yesterday by taking one of his dad's cars out for a spin. He is expected to get his first motor soon.